This invention relates to an automatic picture tube cutting machine, particularly to one automatically feeding material, measuring the size of a picture tube, positioning and cutting the picture tube.
Nowadays, televisions have been widely used in homes, and a large number of them are discarded. Then it is very important to recycle luminescent powder painted in a picture tube, as luminescent powder is a material leading to grow cancer in a human body. Therefore, if it is not properly treated, it pollutes the environment to bring danger to people's health.
In treating old picture tubes of televisions and computers, a front stage containing barium glass is first to be cut off a rear stage of lead glass, and then luminescent powder painted on an inner surface of the glass is sucked off by means of vacuum process, and then collected to be sealed in a container. Then it is sent to a qualified waste treatment factory to be hardened. However, cutting picture tubes has been performed manually so far.
A conventional picture tube cutting machine has old discarded picture tubes manually carried and placed on a work table of the machine, and adjusting the correct position of a picture tube for a worker to wind tungsten filament around the jointed point of the front and the rear stage of a picture tube, with tungsten filament tightly pulled and secured its one end with a clamp, and then the tungsten filament is powered to heat up the glass of a picture tube for a certain period of time (about 2-3 minutes), making the glass inflate because of heating by the tungsten, and then spraying cool water to instantly cool and let the glass where wound with the tungsten filament break. Then the tungsten filament is removed and the rear stage lead glass is stowed away. After that a metal net inside the front stage glass is taken out and the luminescent powder painted on an inner wall of the glass is removed off by means of vacuum process and stored in a container. The front stage glass with luminescent powder completely removed is stowed away for future final treatment.
Manual cutting process of picture tubes just described has the following disadvantages.
1. Placing a picture tube on the work table is done completely by manual labor, it takes much time and work, especially in case of a heavy one, chances are that a picture tube may be broken by colliding with something hard carelessly, causing danger to workers.                2. As picture tubes have various sizes, tungsten filament may have to be long enough for winding, and in addition, heating and cooling time may be different. So a worker should have some experience, or work efficiency may be low. And experienced workers may have to be paid high wages.        